Summer 08.pub - Central Manchester University Hospitals

Did you know?
Studies have shown that the pectin present in
oranges can help suppress appetite for up to four
hours after eating. Oranges also help to activate the
body's own detoxification process and even the skin
and zest of this fruit contain anti-oxidants which help
to transport oxygen around the body and protect the
skin from free radicals which cause signs of aging.
For more info visit www.5aday.nhs.uk
In this issue….
2
Staff News
3
Immunology Bupa Manchester Great Run
4
Emmerdale Star’s Bananathon visit Haematology
5
Improving Patient Flows
6
Clinical Audit in Laboratory Medicine
7
DLM Service Improvement Poster Competition
8
History of the NHS
“Past and New
Communications
available online…”
Want to write an article?
Share your experiences?
Tell us about your Job?
www.manlab.co.uk
Send your information to your manager or
simply email [email protected]
CONGRATULATIONS TO STAFF
Anita Lee-Jones who has been awarded an MSc with
merit by Manchester Metropolitan University.
Oliver Jones who has been awarded PgC in Biomedical
Science by Manchester Metropolitan University.
WELCOME TO
Jacqui Cook, Administration Manager, on her marriage
to Den on 28 June 08.
NEW STAFF
Congratulations to (in Biochemistry) :
Amanda Lunn on passing her MSc year end exams
The Mortuary would like to welcome Emma Jones and
Alix Joddrell. Emma is an Assistant Technical Officer
(ATO) and Alix is a Anatomical Pathology Technician
(APT). Emma came from the private sector and Alix was
a volunteer at Stepping Hill Hospital.
Sarah Robison on passing her part 1 MRCPath exams
Andrew Brown on passing his oral exam.
Special congratulations to Sarah Robinson following the
birth of her son, George Oliver.
Congratulations to (in Haematology) :
Dr Gina Howarth, Consultant Histopathologist, who
joined us from Sheffield on 2 June 08. Gina’s
sub-specialist interests are gynaecological, liver and GI
pathology.
Sarah Smith and Lee Harrison, who have taken up new
Clerical Officer/Receptionist posts in Histopathology
Specimen Reception.
Welcome to the below who joined the Directorate;
Dawn Taylor
Fiona Baluwa
Marya Ashraf
Gareth Attwood
Lesley Douch
Daniel Hughes
Marlena Zdunkiewicz
-
Histology
Immunology
Immunology
Immunology
Biochemistry
Microbiology
Microbiology
We would also like to welcome our new Phlebotomists;
Christine Horan
Amanda Watson
Jane Holt
-
Nila Patel
Kiran Gupta
Lynn Burley
Every little counts
Save a Life….
Give blood…
Phone 0161 251 4278/4218 for an
appointment at Manchester
Blood Centre,
or simply visit...
www.blood.co.uk
Ieram Nawaz has gained HPC Registration and Rishayini
Surendramohan has completed and passed her
Specialist Portfolio.
John Slamen and Dave Booker have passed year 1 of
their BSc and are now moving onto the second year.
Jo Harcourt and Sumayya Mitha have gained their BSc.
Good Luck!
To Shabana from Haematology who is expecting her
baby in July and has just started her maternity leave.
Farewell and best wishes to...
Goodbye to Sylvia Chow the Biochemistry departmental
secretary who retired at the end of April having
organised us all for the last 12 years. Sylvia has been a
great asset to the department and directorate and will
be greatly missed. We will be seeing her every now and
then as she has agreed to come in on occasional days
to help out until her replacement starts, this will be in
early June.
Tracy Rowden is leaving Haematology to take up a new
post in clinical coding, we would like to thank Tracy for
all her work and support.
Best wishes to Barbara Flynn who retired from Client
Services after 27 years NHS service. Two Phlebotomists
have also recently retired, Wendy Duncan after 13 years
of service and Ann Varley who had been with the NHS
for 25 years.
All the best for the future.
2
Immunology team raise 2K for charity.
A team of eight people from the Department
of Immunology took part in the Manchester
BUPA 10K run in May. The team, organised
by Debbie Hughes a specialist immunology
nurse included medical, laboratory and
nursing staff.
Back row left to right: Richard, Matthew, Alex, Hilary and John.
Front row: Cathy and Debbie.
They raised over £2000 for the Primary
Immunodeficiency Association, a charity
dedicated supporting patients with primary
immunodeficiency and research into
treatment of these life threatening
conditions. Immunology will have another
team next May and would welcome runners
from across The Trust
Fire at Manchester Royal Infirmary
Smoking Cessation Clinics
A fire broke out at around 4.30 pm on Saturday 31st
May on the ground floor of the Medical Corridor at MRI
(the old part). It is understood that this was an electrical
fire which started in an electric panel.
If your New Year’s Resolution was to
quit smoking and you gave up on
1st January, you will have already
saved £924.00 (based on 20
cigarettes smoked a day).
This meant that two wards were immediately evacuated – Wards 22 and
26. A total of 42 patients had to be moved. A Medical Emergency was
declared and our A&E Unit was closed to admissions and put on divert to
other A&E Units in the area for several hours.
Later in the night power was also lost in a nearby ward and 15 patients on
Ward 27 also had to be relocated. As you can appreciate relocating this
number of patients is a significant task and we are grateful for the support
of our colleagues at North West Ambulance Service who provided several
crews to facilitate this.
There were no serious injuries, however two patients were treated in A&E
suffering from smoke inhalation. 35 fire fighters attended the hospital to
tackle the blaze and the Fire Service confirmed that the fire procedures we
had in place had been extremely effective.
Message from Colin Dennett (Immunology Lab Manager):
“I would like to thank everyone who has provided help and homes for us
during that week, the support from within the Directorate and Division has
been fantastic.
I would also like to thank all of our staff who have all pulled together under
very difficult circumstances. Also I think I might be able to claim a record
for having a service spread over 7 separate locations in 4 different
buildings!!”
The Manchester Stop Smoking
Service hold a staff drop-in service
every Tuesday morning between
9.00 am and 12.00 noon. No
appointment necessary just call in
at the Occupational Health
Department, MRI.
You can also access this service by
calling to make an appointment Tel:
(0161) 205 5998.
Staff who need advice to help and
support patients can also access
one of the Smoking Cessation
Advisers on Fridays in the
Outpatients Clinic, MRI. You can call
to make an appointment using the
number above.
3
EMMERDALE STAR’S
CHARITY BANANATHON
RUN VISIT HAEMATOLOGY
On Monday 16 June 2008 Emmerdale’s Tony
Audenshaw (aka Bob Hope) visited the Stem Cell
Facility in Haematology and the staff,to take part in a
photo shoot to officially launch ‘Tarzan’s Bananathon’,
an urban marathon with a difference to take place on
13th September in Greater Manchester in aid of the
blood cancer charity Leukaemia Research.
Tony Audenshaw will undertake the 26.6 mile
challenge dressed as Tarzan and will be joined by
Leukaemia Research fundraiser Sean Whewell
dressed as Jane and blood cancer patient Tom
McNally dressed as Leukaemia Research’s running
team mascot, a giant banana.
In a quirky twist, the route through Greater Manchester
will be decided by members of the public who can ask
Tony and friends to stop by. Tony is happy to pull a
pint, serve a customer, sing someone happy birthday
and open a fête in exchange for a donation to
Leukaemia Research.
Tarzan’s Bananathon highlights the start of Leukaemia Research awareness week and venues will have collection
boxes on the day and for the duration of the charity’s awareness campaign (13th-20th September).
For more information or to request Tony
Audenshaw’s ‘Tarzan’s Bananathon’ to come to
you, visit www.banana-army.com
or call 020 7269 9001.
The event takes place from 10.00am on 13th
September and will finish at 8.00pm with an evening
of entertainment featuring a number of acts
performing including Tony’s band White Van Man.
Tony is calling for the people of Manchester to get
involved and start nominating tasks and venues for the
trio of fun-loving fundraisers to visit. Tarzan, Jane and
the ‘Banana’ will be joined on the route by people
whose lives have been affected by blood cancers. The
runners will have a text number displayed on their
backs and chests to allow people to donate on route
without physically handing over money.
Tony says: “It would be great if people would get in
touch to book a visit from Tarzan in return we’d like
them to fundraise for Leukaemia Research. We are
happy to stop at any number of venues: landmarks,
stores, markets, private houses and public houses. It
should be a really fun day and we can all raise money
for life-saving research.”
60 years on from the
National Health Service Bill
Approximately 50,000 men of average height lying head
to toe on the A23 would cover the distance from London
to Brighton --that’s how many people visit the NHS’s A&E
Departments each day.
The capacity of Glastonbury music festival is only slightly
greater than the number of people who go for an
eyesight test each week - approximately 170,000.
See page 8 for more NHS Facts...
4
Annette Davis-Green
I have been invited to speak about my role as Service
Improvement and Redesign Project Manager at an
international conference to be held in Sydney,
Australia on patient flows within diagnostic services. This
is a great honour for me and was a huge surprise to
receive the invitation! I was rather concerned at first,
though, as the invitation includes my flights being paid by
the conference company and it arrived around the same
time as April fools day - was someone trying to wind me
up?! The title of my presentation is simply "Service
improvement within Laboratory Medicine". I am going to
talk about the national context of pathology
modernisation, the reasons why service improvement is
important within pathology, highlight the common
problems and difficulties, how I have tried to embed
service improvement into the Directorate culture through
the service improvement competition and Directorate
Service Improvement Group and present the projects I
have been involved with in the past few years.
These include:
◊
Mortuary service improvements
◊
Histology service improvements
◊
Immunology service improvements
◊
Improvements to facilitate the increase in MRSA demand
◊
Central specimen reception and delivery area
◊
Greater Manchester and Cheshire Haematological
Malignancies Diagnostics service
◊
Greater Manchester Pathology Network
Action Learning Set
Improved Transport
Infrastructure Bid
Congestion Charge
Announcement:
An announcement has been made in Parliament
to say that Manchester City Council can take
forward proposals to hold a consultation in
relation to the introduction of congestions
charges which would affect the main routes into
the city centre.
This exercise will begin with one month of public
awareness raising followed by a three month
public consultation.
You will no doubt see various media reports
which will explain the plans in detail and how as
an individual you can make your opinions known.
We recognise that the congestion charge will
have an impact on some of our staff, patients
and visitors and we will be considering a variety
of options.
The Trust, after careful consideration, has
decided to join United City (a group of influential
businesses and organisations in support of the
congestion charge) so that we are in a position to
influence the process and ensure that our views
and concerns are taken on board.
If the congestion charge goes ahead it is planned
that it would be in place the summer of 2013.
Further updates will be provided through
pathNET and our other communications
channels.
I intend to get the most out of my trip by also visiting a
local Pathology department in Sydney; it will be very
interesting to learn how their pathology systems work
and how it compares to ours. My husband is coming to
Sydney with me and we are going to have a short holiday
after the conference. I have not been to Australia before,
but am reliably informed Sydney is beautiful. My
husband informs me he is going to be looking for jobs
and a house for us whilst I am at the conference, so who
knows - I might not come back!!
Annette Davis-Green
Service Improvement and Re-design Manager
65
Clinical Audit in Laboratory Medicine
The NHS at large and the Trust in particular place
significant emphasis on Clinical Audit. If we look back
many years we can see the prototype of Clinical Audit,
that is Quality Assurance or as we used to call it quality
control, emerging from Laboratory Medicine. When
quality issues became focussed on clinical outcomes
and evidence based medicine came to the fore what we
now understand as Clinical Audit has evolved.
At the present time Laboratory Medicine is at the heart of
diagnosis (at least 70% of all diagnoses; see Carter report!).
After the diagnostic process, our disciplines have
a
continuous involvement in long and short term patient
management. As diagnostic tests become more sophisticated
and new treatments continue to evolve Lab medicine
disciplines continue to play an ever increasing part in patient
care. Clearly as so much of our output impacts directly on
clinical care, most of what we do in laboratory Medicine is
amenable to audit. This gives the opportunity for most
professionals within lab medicine to contribute meaningfully to
the audit process. Both within Lab Medicine and in the
healthcare system at large Clinical Audit continues to develop.
The drivers of Clinical Audit in Lab medicine are easy to
identify. They have both internal and external components.
The internal elements are primarily risk management and
service improvement which together contribute to the
strategic goal of Clinical Effectiveness. The external drivers
include External Quality Assessment (EQA), Laboratory
accreditation (CPA) and external inspections by bodies such as
MHRA.
‘The audit cycle’ is a major model of activity in clinical audit.
Stated briefly, we observe practice, set standards and
measure what we do in terms of these standards.
This allows us to improve what we do, which we can verify by
re-audit. In Lab medicine the outcomes audited may have a
laboratory perspective or a clinical perspective although both
are usually involved. Many of the hard objective endpoints
used by our clinical colleagues in joint audits are laboratory
generated such as glycated haemoglobin in diabetes
management and cholesterol in management of
cardiovascular risk.
In practice, many of our activities in the Lab Medicine disciplines
are a continuous audit where this cycle is regularly repeated. QA
is an example of this, which is applicable to all our disciplines. In
the case of EQA standards here are set externally and review is
also external. In recent years EQA has developed from a mainly
analytical exercise in most disciplines to include data
interpretation. In some disciplines such as Cytology and
Histopathology interpretative performance of individuals is
assessed.
In addition to extensive participation in EQA, significant
innovations in EQA have been pioneered in the Directorate.
These include the circulation of digitalised images for teaching
and interpretative purposes in Haematology and the use of
moving images for assessment of sperm motility in Andrology.
The range of audit activity in the Lab Medicine is considerable.
It includes discipline specific audits joint audits involving more
than one Lab Medicine discipline and joint multidisciplinary
audits with Associated Clinical disciplines. These audits often
are associated with Regional and National themes. Quite
frequently the results of our audits are presented at important
national and international meetings. At a local level the
directorate is a prominent contributor to the Annual Trust Clinical
Audit and Risk Management fair.
Why not visit the audit area of the Directorate website to see
some audits presented at recent Trust events. This will give you
a clear indication of the breadth of Clinical Audit activity in your
own and other Lab Medicine disciplines.
Dr Ian Laing
6
1st Annual DLM Service
Improvement Poster
Competition
Service improvement is going on around the Directorate all the time,
but do we know about it? Do we share it? Do we acknowledge the
hard work that goes in to this, and celebrate our successes?
Sometimes, maybe, yes, but often, no! This is why we decided to
hold a service improvement poster competition for our Directorate,
open to all Directorate employees. Key to this is to acknowledge
that this is driven from all grades and types of staff within the
Directorate, from support staff, to Clinical Scientists, to office
staff. We are dedicated to our work and are passionate to provide
the best service for our users and ultimately the patients. We need
to take time to share our ideas, encourage each other, acknowledge
hard work and celebrate our achievements. This was the first of
what will now be an annual Directorate event.
Entries had to be completed work, with demonstratable
improvement in some aspect of service and completed within the
last two years. Entries had to be signed by the Lab Manager to verify
the work. The competition was split into two categories: small (to
include individuals) and large team (more than 2). The winning
teams received WHSmith vouchers worth £15 (small team) and £20
(large team) which were presented by Prof Bolton, Directorate
Clinical Director. Each team also received a certificate, a book
about 'Thinking Differently' and a set of booklets about service
improvement within the NHS. Sponsorship was kindly provided by
Leica who were represented on the day by Vincent Niles. Lunch was
provided.
Winners :
Small team - 'Colour coding in histopathology'
Judith Brierley and Caroline Glennie'
Large Team - 'Affect of Autovalidation of Routine
Coagulation Results on Turnaround Times Over the
24Hour period'
Doreen Shanks, Alan Burgess,
Dave Hoctor, John Ardern
7 posters were entered , with a good variety of entries, covering all
three service improvement themes of
◊
Use of Technology
◊
Maximising Staff Skills
◊
Optimising Processes
Everyone who attended the poster display session appreciated
learning about what work was going on in other departments and
encouraged to continue service improvement within their own
areas. Some people were not able to stay for the presentations, but
just managed to find time to view the posters. We hope to receive
more entries next year and from a greater variety of disciplines.
7
60 years on from the
National Health Service Bill
8